Sierra Ferrell – Path of Flowers
Rounder
“I’ve been American dreaming, however I by no means appear to get no relaxation,” Sierra Ferrell sings on the opener from her fourth album, Path of Flowers, maybe diagnosing the ills of a complete technology. “American Dreaming” is a highway track on which the West Virginia-born/everywhere-based singer and instrumentalist tallies up the excessive value of pursuing a profession. For her meaning cramped vans, lengthy drives, low pay, damaged relationships, and a basic emotional inertia. Whereas these music-industry specifics won’t apply to each listener, it doesn’t take a lot extrapolation to sympathize with Ferrell’s woes. In different phrases, “American Dreaming” seems like a track for proper now, and the remainder of this adventurous album exhibits why she’s making these sacrifices.
Along with being a dreamer in late-capitalism America, Ferrell additionally belongs to a technology of gamers steeped in old-time and bluegrass—suppose Sarah Jarosz, Molly Tuttle, Billy Strings—however who additionally love Radiohead, top-40 radio, jam bands, and indie rock. She likes to tinker with new sounds and loads of established ones, which makes for a rollercoaster of an album. There’s a two-steppin’ barroom lament “Greenback Invoice Bar,” whose breezy momentum hides a scarred coronary heart. There’s a cowboy ballad referred to as “Cash Prepare,” which rides a steam-powered drum beat to a tragic ending. And there’s a canopy of the bluegrass commonplace “Chitlin’ Cookin’ time in Cheatham County.” And that’s simply the primary facet.
For Ferrell, Americana is huge sufficient to carry all of those disparate concepts and lots of extra but to be found. Each track on Path of Flowers has its personal distinct musical palette or its personal stylistic juxtapositions—briefly, its personal motive to exist. Not each experiment is sort of so sure-footed—specifically the flights of wordless singing on the overdramatic “Fox Hunt,” which recycles a trick that outlined a lot 2010s Americana and now sounds just a little wrung—however the ones that do have a derring-do high quality to them. “I May Drive You Loopy” opens with a high-lonesome fiddle rag that rings out like a down-from-the-mountain fanfare, however then Ferrell and her band remodel it right into a spirited sing-along a couple of girl with full confidence in successful over the item of her passions: “Nicely, I can’t hunt and I can’t fish, however I can drive you loopy; sure, I can,” Ferrell sings with a wink and a nudge.
Path of Flowers is finest when it stares down disappointment and disillusionment, no matter whether or not Ferrell finds a motive to hold on. “Want You Nicely” nurses a damaged coronary heart however makes no area for spite or malice, which makes its quietness all of the extra highly effective. Even “Lighthouse” makes no movement to reply its personal determined questions: “May you be the lighthouse for my soul?” she asks, harmonizing bittersweetly along with her band. “May you be the guiding mild, inform me every part’s alright?” As an alternative, Ferrell lets the uncertainty loom, like a darkish cloud obscuring a rocky shoreline.
And possibly she’s not posing these inquiries to a lover however to a track, one in every of her personal or anyone else’s. Maybe listening to tune on the radio or strumming out a brand new melody on guitar is sufficient to justify her American dreaming. – GRADE: B+
You may try Path of Flowers on Bandcamp and elsewhere.
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